TRAVEL AND TOURISM ENVIRONMENT

Travel and Tourism Environment

Travel and Tourism Environment

State of play

As the transatlantic economic crisis of autumn 2008 began to deepen and spread, Dr Peter Tarlow advised readers of his 'Tourism Tidbits' circular that, 'When historians of modern tourism write about tourism in the first decade of the twenty-first century they will most likely see it as one of continual trials and challenges', citing the fall-out from the Twin Towers attack, 'food safety, health crises, natural disasters, and the rapid rise in petroleum prices'. Spiritual tourism tends to boom during difficult political or economic times… The dominant discourses of tourism studies have been grounded in economics and business studies, although sociology has developed a powerful presence for certain purposes (as evidenced by the impressive citation impact factors of John Urry's concept of the 'tourist gaze'), (Urry, 1995) while approaches through anthropology and cultural geography have also been influential ([Garner, 2005] and [Shields, 1991]).

This latter tendency apart, work in tourism studies has tended to be present-minded and instrumental in its approaches, and to be schematic rather than grounded or contextualised when gesturing towards the potential significance of change over time and inherited attitudes. Despite growing recognition of the interdisciplinary importance of a widening spectrum of social science perspectives for the development of tourism studies, whether as an inclusive discipline or a bundle of approaches, history as such has remained the poor relation. Meanwhile, the growing body of work conducted by historians themselves on tourism history has remained marginal to the mainstream of tourism studies, although this is now beginning to change. This is demonstrated by the publication of wide-ranging collections of essays in recent years, and growing numbers of conferences and conference strands dedicated to relevant themes, such as those organised by the International Commission for the History of Travel and Tourism at Preston, Buenos Aires and Sydney since 2001, and others at European urban history conferences ([Baranowski and Furlough, 2001], [Berghoff et al., 2002], [Koshar, 2002], [Tissot, 2003] and [Walton, 2005]).

Significantly, however, a recent analysis of the relationship between tourism studies and the social sciences discusses every social science discipline except history (Holden, 2005). Moreover, the almost complete absence of references to historical works in a recent collection of essays on the Tourist Area Life Cycle underlines the lack of cross-reference between relevant disciplines (Butler, 2005). It is hoped that the new international Journal of Tourism History, published by Taylor and Francis under the auspices of the ICHTT, will further the process considerably, while the increasingly visible presence of work on tourism in such established historical fields as political and diplomatic history should begin to redress the balance on the historical side ([Endy, 2004], [Merrill, 2001], [Pack, 2006] and [Wharton, 1999]).

Development, disciplines and linkages

Taking history's contribution to tourism studies seriously entails the incorporation of a grounded understanding of how past events, processes and perceptions, and indeed perceptions of the past or of various pasts, feed into where we are now and where we go from ...